


What dreams may come

by RedChucks



Category: The Mighty Boosh (TV)
Genre: Implied things of a sexy nature, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-06
Updated: 2015-07-06
Packaged: 2018-04-07 23:43:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,120
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4282485
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RedChucks/pseuds/RedChucks
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This is really quite rubbish but it wouldn't leave me alone until I'd written it out. Because whenever I see Howard trying to hide in a bunch of pink balloons I get a little storm of emotions in my chest. So, yeah. Sorry.</p>
            </blockquote>





	What dreams may come

What dreams may come:

“Howard. Howard. Howard! Howard!”

Vince’s voice swam into focus in Howard’s sleeping mind, jolting him out of the dreamworld and back into the reality of the keeper’s hut.

“Don’tkillmeI’vegotsomuchtogive!” he yelled as he sat up, his face and hands clammy with sweat and the residual fear from the dream clinging to him like rhinoceros mucous. (Learning what it felt like to be actually covered in rhino snot, that had been a bad day, and Howard was now very careful to ensure that none of the larger mammals missed their yearly flu shots, but that’s another story for another time.)

“Howard?” Vince asked again, and Howard peered at him through the dark as his eyes slowly adjusted.  
Vince’s hair was a bird’s nest, and not the fashionable sort, and his eyes were wide and fearful as he leaned over Howard’s prone form, a knee nudging against his thigh, and Howard realised with embarrassment that he must have woken his friend with his tossing and turning, and possibly his screaming. 

“I’m alright, Vince,” he told him, though the crack in his voice betrayed just how unsettled he still was.  
“Yeah,” Vince agreed, “course you are... Did you... were you... having that nightmare again?”

Vince seemed nervous and Howard knew he had good cause - Vince’s nightmares were rather legendary in the Zooniverse and he’d been known to scream himself awake out of fear that the monkeys really were stealing his face with enough force to bring Naboo out of a trance - but Howard had never really been one for nightmares, until recently.

Howard nodded, then realised Vince might not be able to see it in the dim light.

“Yes, Vince. I was having that nightmare again.”

Vince bit his lip and Howard looked away because the last thing either of them needed right now was Little Howard making an impromptu appearance when Vince was only trying to be helpful and was completely unaware of the effect he was having. The effect he always had.

“Wish you’d tell me what it was about, Howard,” Vince murmured, ruffling his hair nervously. “Not so’s you have to relive it or nothin’, I don’t want you going all ‘One flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest’ on me or anything like that. But cos sometimes talking about your dreams can help, cos you get to realise how silly and not scary it all seems and then your brain can’t use it to scare you no more. And it can’t be that bad. You can tell me, Howard, honest. I won’t laugh or anything.”

Howard gave Vince a hard stare but the younger man seemed genuine in his desire to help, and Howard supposed that really he usually was, even if he went about things in a way that tended to get Howard into more trouble than when they’d started. At least with this he seemed to be remembering advice he had been given at some point, rather than just making it up as he went along. Maybe, Howard thought, he should give it a try. What was the worst that could happen? Other than total and utter humiliation.

“You’re right, Vince,” he said, and watched his friend’s face perk up from where he was kneeling just above his hips. “It is silly. It’s just... I keep dreaming that I really am a balloon, you know, my head, rather than just a dead ringer for one and, well, I’m back in Bainbridge’s lab, strapped to the table, you know?”

Vince nodded, back to biting his lip, and Howard hoped that they weren’t tears he saw in the little man’s eyes, not over something as silly as one of his dreams.

“And well,” Howard continued. “He’s got a pin, Bainbridge that is, and he’s threatening to, that is to say, he’s threatening to, well... pop my head.”

It did seem very silly when you said it aloud. Bainbridge’s lab wasn’t even in use anymore, Fossil had turned it into an underground roller disco and love emporium that nobody but the bonobo monkeys ever went to, and he was actually starting to feel better having got it all out until he heard a strange little noise above him.

“Vince? Vince, are you alright?”

“Howard. Howard! Listen to me! You do not look like a pink balloon, d’ya hear me? You don’t.”

His lip was definitely wobbling now and he was trying to look serious but it only made him look more ridiculous with his pointy features, bush baby eyes and tiny hands flapping about. 

“But, but, you said...” Howard stuttered. “And, and your painting.”

“Yeah, I know what I said,” Vince responded angrily. “But I made it up, alright.”

“You... you made it up?”

“Yeah,” Vince looked down ashamedly but Howard just felt confused.

“But, why?”

“Because, well,” Vince frowned and seemed to be thinking harder than usual. “We were both doing it, weren’t we? You say my face is too busy or something, and I say the opposite about you, right? It was just a bit of fun, just jibing, ‘cept I should’ve known that you always take stuff to heart. Then when I was trying to paint you, well...” he sighed. “I just find you hard to paint, Howard. And draw. I mean, I know what you look like, I can picture you perfectly in my mind, and I can do cartoon versions of you, you know, with a long nose, bushy moustache and tiny eyes, but actually drawing you... it’s really hard. And I didn’t want to get it wrong, or for you to think you look ugly, or... or for you to laugh at me for not being able to get your face right when I look at it every day, and when it’s my favourite face in the world and... um.” 

Howard watched the blush creep up the younger man’s face and felt his heart flutter about like it was starting a trumpet solo in his chest because it sounded almost like Vince had admitted that he liked Howard’s face but he had barely begun his own declaration (he got as far as “Well, I-”) before Vince interrupted.

“So I painted something silly and stupid and dumb so’s you’d know I wasn’t serious. I planned on telling you it was cos I could never properly capture your beauty and that, cos I really... cos I...” he let out a frustrated whine and Howard tried to subtly move his hips away from where Vince’s crotch was still balanced just above him. “But then Mrs Gideon walked in and I couldn’t say it in front of her and you like her better than me.” 

Vince’s voice had dropped until it was little more than a mumble but Howard had heard it all, even if he still couldn’t quite believe it. 

“But Mrs Gideon agreed with you,” he protested. “She said it was a good likeness, right before she forgot my name. Again. Face it, Vince, I’m a balloon, a beige smudge above a uniform. Completely forgettable.”

“No,” Vince said with another sniff, shuffling on his knees until his face was almost too close for Howard to focus on, and his hips were dangerously close to... other things. “She’s just completely batty. She calls herself Mrs Gideon but Gideon’s the name of the old Brown Snake who’s always moping and moaning that it’s too cold and there aren’t enough children to bite. She’s nuttier than one of Naboo’s double nut sundaes, you shouldn’t listen to her. Please?”

Howard tried to think it over, which was a harder feat than might be imagined because Vince was leaning over him and his chest was heaving and the ends of his hair were tickling Howard’s neck, which wasn’t actually an unpleasant sensation, and his eyes were big and blue and his groin was actually touching him now, pressing ever so lightly just above Howard’s own and that made it very difficult to think indeed. But he did, because Vince was looking at him so earnestly, like it was so important that Howard understand what he was saying in his jumbled, grammar deficient way.

“So...” he said thoughtfully. “You don’t think I look like a pink balloon then?”

Vince nodded, then shook his head, then nodded again, looking frustrated.

“No, Howard, I don’t think you look like a balloon.”

“You do in fact,” Howard paused to take in a deep breath and watched as Vince’s eyes widened to cartoonish proportions in anticipation, “ think I’m... reasonably attractive?”

Vince’s lip began to tremble but this time for a rather different reason, and on either side of Howard’s face he could feel the man’s arms trembling too as he attempted to take a deep breath before replying.

“Yeah. I suppose I do.”

“Well then,” Howard said huskily, amazed at how calm and collected he sounded when inside his head his jazzy little brain cell was running around in frantic circles yelling for his secretary. “I suppose what I need to do now is...” he paused again to lick his lips and saw Vince copy the movement, wetting his own plump bottom lip as if under hypnosis. 

“Yes, Howard?”

“Find a way to make some sweeter dreams, I suppose.”

There was a moment, a beat of silence as the words sunk in, before Vince’s lips were on his and Howard’s hands had flown to Vince’s hair to hold him there, to kiss him until his mind was so full of Vince and nothing but Vince and kissing Vince, that he knew he’d never have a bad dream ever again. Above him Vince moaned and Howard finally let his body respond to the teasing pleasure of the younger man’s body against his own. This was it, he realised, this was what he’d wanted all along. Not just Vince’s body but to know that he meant something, that Vince didn’t just see him as a featureless blob, as background noise, as a pink balloon bobbing around in the background of the glam rock music video that was Vince Noir’s life. Vince did see him, and he liked what he saw.

Vince took that moment to thrust his hips more sharply against Howard’s at which point he stopped trying to think. But, he promised himself, this was definitely the start of something big, and wonderful for Howard Moon and he was going to remember this for the rest of his life.

*

Howard awoke with a start, squinting as the early morning light streamed through the keeper’s hut window, and trying to figure out why he was awake, and cold. He’d had a dream... It’d been a bad one at first, a nightmare, though he couldn’t remember what it’d been about, but then... Howard blushed. Well then, somehow, it had turned into a very different kind of dream, a good dream, and Vince had...

Howard looked down and barely held back his shriek. He was naked, except for his socks, which explained why he was cold, but there wasn’t any good explanation for his lack of pajamas, or the flaky mess of dried... (fluids, his brain supplied helpfully) that covered his stomach. In his dream he must have, he supposed, gotten rather excited, and Vince had been there, and... Howard let his eyes travel over to where Vince lay, curled up under both his own and Howard’s sleeping bags. He looked peaceful, a slight smile twitching the corners of his lips as he slept, his hair sticking up from his head in strange directions like a hedgehog in a wind storm.

Howard stood up as quietly and carefully as he could. He could not let Vince see him like this, no sir. The sight of him naked and covered in... fluids, would probably be enough to give the boy nightmares. He tiptoed as quickly as possible to the bathroom and decided the best thing to do was to have a shower and pretend the whole thing had never happened. It had only been a dream, after all. Howard wasn’t thick enough to think that Vince would ever think of him like that, would ever kiss him or call him beautiful. No, that was just a sweet, if bittersweet, dream.

It had seemed very real though, he thought. Very real. 

It wasn’t until he felt two small hands sliding around his waist when he was in the process of shampooing his hair that he realised, after the initial yelp of panic and mad scramble not to fall in a slippery heap in the shower cubicle, that it had seemed so real because, well, it had been. And then Vince had smiled at him, his hair dripping into his eyes, and taught him exactly what sweet dreams are made of. 

*


End file.
